Who am I?

• Main Author: Goh, Lynne Wei Ling.
• Other Authors: School of Art, Design and Media
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Drawing, design and illustration; DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/44684
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Autobiographical memories play an important part in telling us about our identity because it records the significant past events in our lives. We heavily depend on them to verify the past, develop the present and guide the future, and it plays an essential role in our everyday lives. We search and reflect on such memories, re-living both positive and negative events. Autobiographical memory is no doubt essential in telling us of the history that makes us who we are today but because we so instinctively believe in it that we may also surrender our identities to the ‘responsible truthfulness’ which we place on our autobiographical memories that we tend to forget that memories are as imperfect as the person who created it. This lies in the fact that autobiographical memories are not static recordings of the past but reconstruction of events based on the present perception, emotion and knowledge. The nature of memory itself borders on the edge of imagination which allows distortions to occur. But what most of us are seldom aware of is that our autobiographical memories get distorted all the time because as long as it is a recollection, it will unconsciously be manipulated by your present self as well. If that is the case, then how can you be sure that how you remember who you are is true? Or are we just living an illusion? This project aims to show that reflected autobiographical memory is always distorted and that both memory and identity is an illusion we create out of the other. It will look into their interdependent relationship to raise awareness of the vulnerable constitution of both and to show how distortions allow both to be within our control through the use of visual graphics as a personal and conceptual interpretation with reference to psychology, as well as combining the use of common graphic storytelling with the art of contemporary illustration.